Every year when the last newspaper carrier leaves the parkinglot with our annual FOCUS edition safely rolled and ready fordelivery, the entire office takes a deep breath, for major task hasbeen completed!

Every year as I look over the mailroom, where a few hoursearlier stacks of newspapers covered every available spot, I take adeep sigh of relief, but I also shed a small tear for theappreciation of the dedication, hard work and effort that goes intoproducing 102 pages of local photos and editorial copy.

Like the Kid’s Kingdom construction a few weeks ago where thecommunity came out to produce the playground on Industrial ParkBoulevard, everyone in our building huddled together to complete atask we began over four months ago. In our mailroom, as well as ina makeshift mailroom set up under a tent in our parking lot — whenyou are dealing with over 5 tons of newspapers it takes up a lot ofspace — everyone pitched in to help. Laughter permeated the areaas a busy task was tackled.

For two-hours, some 80-plus hands carefully and methodicallyinserted FOCUS 2002 into Friday’s edition of The Daily Leader.Fingernails were broken, blisters rubbed and hands cramped asalmost 8,000 newspapers were rolled and bagged for delivery.Thankfully the rain held off.

By 12:50 p.m. all carriers were on the roads heading out to seethat our subscribers received our latest report on the area we allcall home. With each paper weighing 1.16 pounds, they had ajob!

As I told our staff in a Thursday morning meeting, when you lookthrough the pages and see all of the stories and photos about ourneighbors and friends, it is exciting. When you read about thisyear’s Citizen of the Year — Homer Richardson — as well as theUnsung Heroes featured on pages two and three of the first section,it makes you appreciate how fortunate we are to live in a communityso blessed with a rich blend of talented individuals who arededicated to this area.

Our staff puts in a tremendous amount of time and effort eachyear on Focus. For many of us, we have been doing it for 11straight years. And while we each of us moans and groans each yearin January when we kick off the project, when it is all over, thesatisfaction of completing a project of this magnitude while alsoproducing a quality newspaper 6-days a week, is quitesatisfying.

We know our readers will enjoy it. Undoubtedly we have leftsomething out, a name was misspelled or a hoped for story did notmaterialize. When you are dealing with the 130 separate deadlineswe must meet, we cannot cover every base, but we do not missmany.

We hope our readers will also take the time to thank theadvertisers whose support makes the entire project possible. It istheir support that funds the project – please thank them.

FOCUS reaches many more than our local subscribers, it is usedby the Chamber of Commerce, King’s Daughters Hospital, the banks,real estate agents and others as a promotional piece for this area.Our story is sent across the country for others to see what thiscommunity has accomplished.

Sometimes you have to brag about yourself and in our view, FOCUSis the way to tell the story.

Thanks to you, our subscribers, thanks to you, our advertisers,and thanks to you, our staff and our newspaper carriers, for a jobwell done.